Labor has changed: Shorten must adapt or perish

The tide has turned for the Labor party, and Bill Shorten will find his quest for high office hinges on his ability to sell himself as a reformist leader, writes Mungo MacCallum.

To any reasonably objective outsider, Labor's first, tentative lurch towards democratic reform would have to be accounted a failure.

With much fanfare the party's foot soldiers were told they would have the opportunity to take part in the election of the leader, only to wake up and discover they hadn't - well, not really.

After three weeks of electioneering, the rank and file had voted decisively - three to two - for Anthony Albanese, but the caucus went even more decisively for Bill Shorten. Thus it was entirely business as usual; the caucus remained the sole arbiter of who was to lead.

And, just to rub it in, the decision was almost entirely along factional lines. Almost, but not quite: while the right was rock solid for Shorten, a handful of the left deserted Albanese, and this defection proved decisive. Then, of course, the warlords did the rest. While Shorten got the deputy he wanted in the left's Tanya Plibersek, the factions divvied up the rest of the spoils among their chosen few, with the result being that not even the bulk of caucus, let alone those outside the party room, got any effective say in the make-up of the opposition frontbench.

The result was entirely predictable and less than wholly satisfactory. Senator Don Farrell, rejected by the voters of South Australia as unworthy of even a backbench role in parliament, got to serve out his term in the shadow ministry as his party's spokesman on the Centenary of ANZAC - surely a role which would have benefitted from having someone who is still going to be around the place as that anniversary approaches. His fellow king (or rather regicide) maker, David Feeney, gained a promotion for no reason discernible to observers - except that he is a capo of the Victorian right. Much the same could be said of Stephen Conroy, although his future, in the political killing ground of defence, does not look all that rosy.

Naturally, there were complaints. The loudest came from the women of the right, who complained that just one of their number - Michelle Rowland - made the cut. The faction unceremoniously dumped the former speaker, Anna Burke, not even supporting her for the lowly position of chief party whip. The women of the left did considerably better, allowing Shorten to boast that with a total of 11 female ministers, he had the most feminist-friendly frontbench in federal history - which may have been true, but was of no comfort to those who had missed out for the benefit of those they considered their inferiors.

The long-serving Warren Snowdon, now demoted to the parliamentary secretarial outlands, made the usual noises about coteries of anonymous men meeting in secret, and certainly he and a few others, notably Ed Husic, could consider themselves hard done by. But as he himself admitted, while the factional system endures, so will promotion on grounds of seniority and personal fealty rather than pure merit. In an ideal world, perhaps we would have no tickets, just people putting up their hands to be judged by an open vote of their fellows. But as the whole messy process has made clear, we are still a very long way from that ideal world.

However, it must be said that we can report progress. While there is obviously disappointment among many party members that their clear preference was overruled by the caucus, there is absolutely no desire to abandon the reforms already made or to use this setback as an excuse not to press ahead. The tide has turned and expectations remain high. Those who seek to frustrate them - mainly the union bosses who see any step forward, however small and hesitant, as a threat to their own fortresses of power and influence - should be aware that not only a majority of the general public, but an increasing number within the party itself, now view their eventual demise as inevitable.

Membership has already grown dramatically at the first hints of reform, and the newcomers will not countenance a return to the status quo. At the national ALP conference next year, it is a safe bet that attempts will be made to derail the entire process of reform, and while these will fail, there is a real risk of a faction-driven compromise which could be almost as bad. If the unions cannot push the rank and file aside altogether, they will probably demand their share: an attempt to move to the system of the British Labor Party, which elects its leader by a three-way split between the parliamentary party, the rank and file and the unions, is certain. But this would have the result of effectively disenfranchising the rank and file altogether: it would give the factions a permanent two-thirds majority, if they chose to use it - and of course they would.

Given that the unions still have 50 percent control of the conference, it is a real possibility. And if the unions want to play tough, they will also be able to stall further reform, such as the obvious next step: party pre-selections for the Senate and for state upper houses to be determined by a ballot of all eligible members in each state. And this is where Shorten's role will be critical. In the run-up to the leadership election, he matched Albanese by promising to continue the reform process; but there has always been a feeling that he is rather less keen on it than his left-wing rival, and the feeling has intensified since he took the top job. He has shown some signs of trying to shake himself free of his own union past, but at the conference the screws will be on.

If he succumbs, if he relegates it all to the too hard basket, he will immeasurably damage both the party and his own credibility and electability. It is not overstating it to say that his chances of becoming prime minister hinge largely on his ability to sell himself as a reformist leader - of both the Labor Party and the nation as a whole. He can make history, or he can appear as a footnote. So get with it, Bill - live up to your name. Shorten the odds!

Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.